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New 'Legend of Hercules' Trailer: A Half-God Goes to War [Updated]

There will be two Hercules movies hitting theaters in 2014. One stars Dwayne Johnson (Fast & Furious 7) - playing an older version of Herc who has devolved into a world-weary mercenary for hire - while the other is titled Hercules: The Legend Begins (UPDATE: Summit has retitled the film The Legend of Hercules) and features Twilight alum Kellan Lutz playing a younger version of Zeus' son (who could be mistaken for a JCrew model).

Much like the Comic-Con preview footage, the newly-unveiled trailer for The Legend of Hercules illustrates the continuing influence of Zack Snyder's 300 on the swords and sandals genre. Question is, following less impressionable acts like the Clash of the Titans remake and Tarsem Singh's Immortals, have audiences grown tired of seeing ancient world mythology given the modern pop-action movie treatment (see: slick digital visuals, 3D effects, etc.)?

The Legend of Hercules follows the adventures of young Herc (Lutz), as he must decide whether to run away to live with his true love - the Princess of Crete, Hebe (Gaia Weiss) - or embrace his destiny, as the half-god prophesied to overthrow the tyrannical King Amphitryon (Scott Adkins) and restore peace to Ancient Greece. It you detect more than a few similarities to the archetypal modern superhero origin story in that synopsis, well, that's not a coincidence - the characters of ancient mythology are the ancestors of present-day comic book superheroes, after all.

Legend of Hercules was co-written and directed by Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, The Long Kiss Goodnight), whose old-world action movie will be unable to escape comparisons to other recent entries in the genre (even more grounded installments, like Gladiator). In terms of visuals, Harlin's film seems to have a higher-budgeted design than Starz' Spartacus - minus the show's eye-catching color palette - but also looks to be less sophisticated than the upcoming prequel/sequel, 300: Rise of an Empire (not directed by Snyder).

As for Lutz as Hercules: he seems like a pretty vanilla and poker-faced protagonist on his own; probably more so, once we see The Rock in the trailer for Brett Ratner's Hercules movie. Otherwise, Legend of Hercules seems to be a perfectly acceptable time waster (read: too derivative for much else), for those in the mood to munch some popcorn and watch hunky warriors fight one another - be it on the battlefield or in the gladiatorial arena - during the early goings of 2014.

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The Legend of Hercules opens in 2D and 3D theaters on January 10th, 2014.